The present disclosure is generally related to the field of color characterization for color rendering devices or systems such as image/text printing or display systems and/or for color characterization of toner, ink, paint or other color marking material design processes. Characterizing the underlying mapping (forward transform) from a printer or display's internal color space (e.g., CMY, CMYK, etc.) or of a material design process space (e.g., mixture ratios of pigments, colorants, surfactants, magnetic materials, carriers, or other constituent components that affect color) to a perceived print-out/display color space (e.g., La*b* or other color spectrum) is important to achieving color consistency within and across color reproduction devices and marking material production processes. In practice, this color mapping varies from device to device and from process to process, and varies over time in a single device, due to physical conditions such as temperature, humidity, inks or other marking materials, printed media type (e.g., paper stock type, thickness), component wear and tear, and manufacturing tolerances associated with the reproduction devices. In printers or display devices, moreover, the forward color mapping characterization facilitates adjustments in the rendering process via control algorithms to adjust individual devices in order to achieve color consistency across product lines and over time. Color mapping transforms or models can be assessed in terms of accuracy with respect to human perceptions of color or another metric. The DeltaE2000 (dE2K) metric is one such scoring function or error metric for evaluating the accuracy of color models used in characterizing printing and display devices or color marking material design processes. However, the dE2K metric has a very complicated functional representation, whereby conventional color device or design process characterization methods do not directly use dE2K or other more accurate metrics in model generation.